


Virgin Sacrifice is Also Magic

by XaviaAndromedovna



Category: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (for Teen Wolf at least, Canon Compliant, Crossover, Fluff and Crack, Fridge Horror, Friendship, Gen, Greenberg is a brony but not in the creepy sense, Mary Sue, Octopi & Squid, Parallel Universes, Virgin Sacrifice, Why Did I Write This?, give or take a sacrifice), technically Greenberg dies but only from a magical perspective, you can't prove Greenberg DIDN'T do this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-22 16:17:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22019758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XaviaAndromedovna/pseuds/XaviaAndromedovna
Summary: When Ms. Blake goes on her darach rampage, Greenberg seizes an opportunity to finally make some friends.Or, that time Greenberg lived out his MLP self-insert dreams thanks to the power of stump magic.
Relationships: Greenberg & Mane Six
Kudos: 2





	1. Goodbye, Beacon Hills

**Author's Note:**

> Hooookay, so for this year's New Year's Eve entry, I give you this monstrosity that I started writing ca. 2014 for a Tentacle Big Bang on LJ that fell through. It's been sitting in my WIPs for a while because I initially planned on it being bang-length but since it doesn't have to be anymore it isn't #idowhatiwant. Unbetaed, if only so it can be a surprise to the friend who has only heard whispers of this fic's existence.
> 
> Content warning: his sacrificial death is shown not in too much detail but enough to merit a heads-up, although he's not actually dead.

Greenberg is a loser. He knows it, the coach he has a crush on knows it, the boys on the team know it—even the werewolf who lurks in the shadows by the bleachers at practice sometimes knows it. This is high school, and according to its unwritten law he was now and always will be alone. He stopped trying to fight it a long time ago.

Humans are notorious for their long memories. In third grade he pissed off Lydia Martin and she got him excommunicated from the playground. Stiles especially never talked to him again for saying she was a psychosexual replacement for his newly-dead mother. Cora Hale pushed him in 5th grade when he was in her way and he yelled at her turned back that he hoped she died in a fire. A week later, she did. (Or so everyone thought.) He accidentally ratted out Danny Mahealani for hacking when he was 13. And last year he almost got bitten by Laura Hale when he blew her cover. His reputation in Beacon Hills is made up of thousands of these snippets entered into the collective memory over the years to paint a picture of a boy with zero tact or scruples, no understanding of boundaries, and no hope of keeping any friend clueless enough to declare themself such.

Until this year, he believed them when they said he was a worthless loner. But when Scott McCall came to school one day miraculously on the fast track to co-captaincy, he started digging. Werewolves were the most obvious supernatural shenanigans happening in Beacon Hills, and a few snoops around the Hale house when its resident brooder was busy doing whatever it is werewolves do yielded a laptop under the stairs. He started his first bestiary from these files, to which he added when Gerard Argent’s keys had been left in his office door. He was suddenly very interested in Archaic Latin (not to be confused with Etruscan). It led him to Deaton’s office and to Gaelic. By the beginning of junior year he was proficient in five languages, had a basement’s-worth of supernatural paraphernalia, and knew how to use it. All he needed was a Spark.

His original plan was to kidnap Stiles for a bit and study him, but between his posse of wolves and the fact that Greenberg was a jackass, not a kidnapper, another plan was necessary. Suddenly, bodies started piling up. Virgin sacrifices could have indicated a lot of things, but by the fourth victim he knew someone was shooting the moon for the power of the five-fold knot. His trusty telluric current map in hand, he decided to strike before stricken; waiting for a darach to meet its magic-using neighbors was historically a bad plan.

He’s a little surprised to find that the English teacher, Ms. Jennifer Blake, is the one behind things, but he’s found his Spark. And now, he’s going to use it.

“Greenberg? How did you—“

“Magic,” he deadpans. “I wanna make a deal.”

“A deal?” Jennifer snorts. “How about I just kill you.”

“Because I have something you need and you have something I need.”

She smirks, approaching slowly with appraising eyes. “You have my attention.”

~~~

Her laughter is gratingly incredulous. “I’m sorry, you want me to _what_?”

He glares at her as hard as his baby face can muster. “I want you to banish me to Equestria.”

She laughs harder. “I hate to break it to you, Jonathan, but that’s not a real place.”

He fumbles for the bargaining chip in his pocket. “If the universe is constantly expanding and contracting, then there is in effect an infinite number of realities. The trick is discovering how to move between them.” When he opens his hand, Ms. Blake brings a hand to her mouth in shock.

“Is that…”

“A shard from Carroll’s looking glass. I have all the ingredients, but I’m not a Spark.”

“Impressive. But what exactly do I get out of this?”

“You mean besides all my supplies I’ll no longer need? You need sacrifices, and I won’t be needing my body. I can’t take it with me; I’ll have to switch consciousnesses with another organism in that world.”

“You’re _volunteering_?”

“Only if you agree to help me.”

She barks out another annoying laugh. “Well I must say, you’re smarter than some of the philosophers I was considering. But why are you helping me?”

He shrugs. “I really don’t care what happens here when I’m gone. Hell, the way this town’s going, they’ll all probably be dead soon anyway. But maybe this way one less person has to die.”

“You actually care about these people, don’t you?”

He pockets the shard and starts to channel the current. “I only come off like an asshole. I’ll see you next week.”

~~~

The rising moon fills Greenberg with crackling anticipation. It shines through the window and alights on a series of carefully placed mirrors. A bowl sits among herbs and potions, and the glass shard lies reverently among them. Everything has been carefully prepared for Ms. Blake, who appears in his basement right on schedule.

“Wow, someone _has_ done their homework after all.”

Greenberg snorts, because he knows she’s referring to the fact that he hasn’t turned in an assignment all week. “This is the only class I care about.”

She pouts wickedly and places a dramatic hand against her chest. “That hurts my feelings a lot, Jonathan.”

“Never promised I had tact.”

“Are you sure you want to do this? I could certainly use the help of someone with your—“

“I’m sure.”

She sighs. “Very well. Let’s get started. I don’t know this spell off-hand so you’re going to have to walk me through it.” She watches him carefully as he sits in a chair before the table.

“It’s all in that book there.” She peruses the page, then sets to work, mixing and humming and smiling all at once.

“Okay, I need you to focus very hard on the realm you are trying to contact,” she says, handing him the shard.

He takes it and gazes intently into its recesses until Equestria comes into view. He is under some body of water. An octopus swims by. He follows it menacingly, and suddenly he can’t breathe.

“Stay focused,” she hisses as the garrote tightens. He catches a glint of moonlight with the mirror before he closes his eyes, succumbing to the lack of oxygen.


	2. Hello, Equestria

When he opens his eyes, he’s underwater, and everything’s in Technicolor.

His instinct is to breathe in, but he has no lungs with which to do so. Once he realizes that breathing is no longer necessary to his survival, he catalogues the things he feels. He has eight tentacles, and he can feel each suction cup as it caresses the water around him. They surround his mouth, which sits at the bottom of his head. The head follows behind his tentacles’ machinations as he takes his first tentative steps along the ocean floor.

“Cool,” he whispers. Wait. It occurs to him then that he can speak without lungs or vocal chords.

He has arrived in Equestria.

He spends the day learning how to walk and swim, how to stalk and catch prey, how to speak underwater. He finds a little cave in a rock formation in which he can curl up and sleep with what would be a smile on his face but is now just a contented set of his eyes.

The next morning, he makes it his goal to reach the surface. This can hopefully give him a clue as to _where_ the Hell in Equestria he is. The surface, however, is apparently _really_ far away. He must be in the open ocean. When he does surface, he realizes that breathing is actually a really big problem, because his gills sputter in the air.

Okay, staying in the ocean it is.

He spends the next week just enjoying his life as an octopus, but after the novelty has worn off, he starts to miss having human interactions, however unsatisfying. He seems to be the only sentient creature down here. The thought that he banished himself to a life even lonelier than the one he left makes him want to ink.

He spends a month travelling the ocean, just for something to do. Eventually, he finds himself at a beach, shallow waves drawing him closer and closer to the edge. The tide is rising, so he ventures closer to the ever-ascending sand. When he is nearly ashore, he hears voices. Shockingly familiar voices.

“Pinkie Pie, you drop that poor critter right now, y’hear?”

“Whee!”

“And _please_ refrain from splashing about so, or you’ll ruin my mane!” 

The last time he tried to make a new friend, Allison showed him she knew how to use a taser. But by some fortuitous twist of fate, he has stumbled upon the Mane Six, whose literal job it is to teach people—err… ponies—friendship. If anyone can teach him how to make a place for himself, it’s them.

Fluttershy sees him skirting the edges of the beach. “Oh! Hello there, what’s your name?”

He realizes halfway through that a) Greenberg is a weird name for an octopus and b) this is his chance to reinvent himself. “Green…water.”

“Oh my,” she startles. “You can talk!”

Oh no, he’s messing this up already.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you.”

“Oh, no Greenwater, _I’m_ sorry, I’ve never met an octopus in person before. I didn’t know they could talk. My name is Fluttershy!”

“So nice to meet you,” he beams. “Your reputation precedes you, as does that of your friends.”

“Oh dear, all good things I hope?”

“The best—it’s actually such an honour to meet you all, you have no idea.”

Fluttershy lives up to her name with a shy smile and is about to respond when Rainbow Dash calls over. “Hey Fluttershy, found a new pet already?”

The other five ponies and Spike gather around him, and Greenb—Greenwater tries to remind himself that there’s only so much he can be expected to know; after all, this isn’t a TV show anymore, it’s real life. He lets them introduce themselves and luckily they do most of the talking. They agree to bring him back to Ponyville with them, which is a brilliant plan up until they realize they have no way to get him there.

“Oooo! I have an idea!!!” Pinkie Pie removes her confetti cannon from wherever it is she hides it as well as a deflated balloon. She fills the cannon barrel with water, tosses Greenwater into it, and seals the barrel with the balloon so he doesn’t slosh out as they move. “There! How’s that working for you?”

It’s cramped, but considering his alternatives (i.e. none) it’ll have to do. “I’m all good, thanks!”

Along the way, Pinkie excitedly makes plans for a welcome celebration as Rainbow Dash regales him with tales of their exploits. Sweet Apple Acres has a lake on the property Applejack’s offered for him to use, although he’s not quite sure if Equestrian biology distinguishes between freshwater and saltwater species. Twilight Sparkle is genial, as befits the Princess of Friendship, but she eyes him warily, noticeably quiet throughout most of the trip. When they reach Ponyville, Pinkie recruits the other ponies to help her wrangle up supplies while Twilight gets to work on sorting out his water. He’s set up in her bathing trough while she experiments with the salinity, having the same worry he did.

“So Greenwater,” Twilight says cautiously, changing the subject. “How did you come to find Equestria?”

“Oh,” he replies, “I’ve just been wandering around the ocean the past month. I happened to come across the shore and there you all were.”

She hums and stirs in more salt. “And how did you come to be an octopus?”

Greenwater stills. “I… umm… I’m not sure I follow.”

She fixes him with a guarded look. “There’s a reason Fluttershy didn’t know octopodes can speak: it’s because they don’t.”

Busted. There are a number of ways he could play this, but the entire point of this move was to try new things. Perhaps he should start with honesty. “Okay,” he sighs. “The truth is I’m not from this reality, I’m from a parallel universe. I used magic—which is not nearly as common in my world—to switch consciousnesses with an octopus in your world and now I’m here.”

She seems not to have been expecting that answer, given her open-mouthed stare, but she quickly recovers. “Sounds plausible. We’ve seen our fair share of alternate realities. Any particular reason you ended up here or was it random?”

He tries to balance the truth with avoiding explaining the existential horror of their lives being a fictional story in his world. “I was actually kinda hoping I’d run into you all. Your expertise in friendship is so well-known we’ve heard about it in my world. And since I’m not so good at making friends there, I was hoping you could teach me here.”

She finally smiles at him genuinely. “Of course, Greenwater, we’d be happy to help! I’m glad you were able to find us.” They work on companionably, trading stories about their magical exploits, although Greenwater avoids some of the darker implications of his practice and it appears Twilight does too. Eventually he indicates that they’ve reached a good concentration and Twilight makes a note in a book.

A couple hours later, the other ponies file into Twilight’s house to escort him to the party. Applejack and Rarity have been working on a vessel to roll him around in more permanently, a large glass box on wheels filled with water and operable with his tentacles. Twilight gets to work adjusting the salt content, and in short time they’re off.

Greenwater had never had a birthday party, and was never exactly popular enough to attend other people’s parties. So the idea of a party just for him is already overwhelming. Actually being there would be enough to make him cry if he still had tear ducts or wasn’t already encased in saltwater. The denizens of Ponyville are exceedingly welcoming to him, showering him with attention and housewarming gifts when they’ve never even met him. He manages to be awkward only a couple times, and even those instances are laughed off not in malice but in good-natured camaraderie.

By the time the sun has long set and Princess Luna has begun her vigil in the night sky, Greenwater is exhausted but content. Magic might be a hellscape where he’s from, but here it’s given him everything he’s ever wanted. “Thanks Ms. Blake,” he murmurs into the night, settling into a recess in the lake bed and sleeping peacefully.


End file.
